


Sprinkle Distribution Rules

by asianellenpage



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Kid!Fic, M/M, childhood best friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 14:17:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asianellenpage/pseuds/asianellenpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...he gets to his room, where he finds a curly-haired blonde boy sleeping in one of the beds.</p>
<p>Pavel Chekov, his name was, and Hikaru was reminded of his childhood..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sprinkle Distribution Rules

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for kid!fic day of Chulu Week 2013, but due to other commitments was not able to finish >_

When he is nineteen, his sister convinces him to enlist in Starfleet.  His sister’s obsession with it the moment recruitment opened has been passed on to him, but now she’s in the Laurentian system, on the USS Jacobson as a communications officer and he’s only starting his training.  
  
He walks the yards of Starfleet and he gets to his room, where he finds a curly-haired blonde boy sleeping in one of the beds.  
  
Pavel Chekov, his name was, and Hikaru was reminded of his childhood, and he comes in the room and takes the other bed.  
  
When Pavel wakes up it’s five pm, and Hikaru is on his PADD playing a game of Spider Solitaire. Pavel stares at him. Hikaru looks at him with a questioning look. Pavel looks away, gets up, and with his jersey shorts and oversized grey hoodie, he leaves the room, only bringing his phone.  
  
They don’t talk for the first month; Pavel only stares silently while Hikaru scratches his head thinking of the answer to this question on his homework. Hikaru always turns to look at him but he will always look away. Come to think of it, Pavel never seems to be doing any homework. What kind of Starfleet student is he?  
  
"Why do you keep staring?" Hikaru asks one day without looking at Pavel to know that he was already staring. There is a short silence before Pavel mumbles out an answer, "I’m sorry. I just thought you looked rather familiar." And they don’t talk any more after that. Pavel leaves the room again, this time not bringing his phone. And barefoot.  
  
The last day of examinations there is a big party at a bar, and Hikaru is invited. Out of politeness he tells Pavel and asks him if he wants to tag along, and Pavel only shrugs but follows him anyway.  
They get to the bar and it’s wild, and Hikaru is drinking and dancing and then he’s in a corner with an Orion girl making out when he thinks of Pavel and wonders where he is in this alcohol-filled party, a fifteen-year-old is not supposed to be here, but maybe he found one of his friends to take care of him. He’s not Hikaru’s responsibility anyway.  
  
Then the party dies down. The Orion is called by her friends and she giggles and leaves, biting her lip, and Hikaru laughs.  
  
He’s by the door when Pavel comes from upstairs, carried by Wilson, giggling drunkenly, and Hikaru offers to take him back to the dormitory. Pavel eases into Hikaru’s arms and he begins to hiccup, and Hikaru hails a cab back to the Academy.  
  
In the cab Pavel is talking aboutstrawberry ice cream, one half with rainbow sprinkles and another half with no sprinkles and Hikaru thinks he’s having a craving, and Hikaru tells him he’s absolutely trashed but laughs anyway. He tells the cab driver to drive them to an ice cream parlor though.  
  
When they get to the ice cream parlor, Hikaru buys him what he's been talking about earlier: a strawberry ice cream with his rainbow sprinkles on just one side. He sits Pavel down in a booth and tries to feed him his ice cream, but Pavel only giggles and says, “Do you even know - who I am?”

Hikaru laughs again, his mind clearing up. He tries to push the spoon into Pavel's mouth, “yes, you’re the kid genius, Pavel Chekov. Youngest kid in the fleet. Also my roommate. I know who you are. Now open up, you wanted this.”  
  
Hikaru tries not to miss Pavel's mouth but Pavel grabs his wrist, get up and kisses Hikaru, eyes closed. Hikaru gasps in shock and pushes Pavel off him, and Pavel lets out a miserable sob. “I am so sorry,” Hikaru apologizes, and Pavel runs out of the ice cream parlor.  
  
Hikaru doesn’t see Pavel at all anymore after that. He virtually disappears, but he knows he’s still there because the bed is left unmade and his graphs are still taped to his side of the wall in their room.  
  
He leaves for the Christmas break without saying 'goodbye', and it isn't his fault. It's Pavel's. He's fifteen and pubescent and you can't just do that, okay.  
But there is a nagging feeling in Hikaru's chest that blames himself, because he invited him to that party and he left him alone, and he took the liberty to get drunk.  
It's still Pavel's fault.  
  
Thanksgiving comes and they celebrate at Hikaru's house, and Otsuri is home, laying out an inflatable bed in the basement with Toshiro helping her, or at least, acting like it, because he's scouring the area for 'treasure' – god bless his ten-year-old self – when he finds a worn out holovid.  
  
He raises it up like it's a fish he caught himself, and Otsuri laughs, taking it from Toshiro's hands. "Remember this, Hikaru? You and your BFF Pavel. You guys were so close, you wouldn't stop watching movies on this thing, and that dumb strawberry ice cream I was always sent out to buy for you and your crazy sprinkle distribution rules--"

"Wait, what?" Hikaru interrupts, but his sister holds her hand up to silence him.

"--and then when I heard that he enlisted in Starfleet I went out of my way to get you two to become roommates, it was embarrassing."  
  
"Pavel--roommate--Starfleet--what?" He stutters out.  
  
"You mean--?"  
  
"His name was Pavel, I got that--"  
  
"--you never realised--"  
  
"--but his surname was Chekov--"  
  
"His mother remarried, Hikaru--"  
  
"--and I assumed the name was common--"  
  
"--he took his stepfather's last name."  
  
"I've been sleeping in the same room with Pavel but--"  
  
"Douche." Otsuri declares with finality.  
  
Before Hikaru leaves his house he packs the yellowing copy of Ender's Game that Toshiro also found which he remembers belonged to Pavel into his bag and goes on his sister's hover car. They go to the transporter facility where Otsuri tells him, "you done fucked up, Ka. I went through all that trouble for you to set you two up. Now go back and fix it. And I'd tell you to do well but you've always been better than me at everything. And you've got your license already, right? The car's yours." And she gets off the car with her duffel bag, and Hikaru, stunned, slides to the driver's seat and drives to Starfleet in disbelief.  
  
The room is empty when he gets back, but it's just the same: Chekov's bed, table and wall a splatter of physics.  
  
He sits on his bed, reading Ender's Game, or at least trying to. But the words are blurring and nothing is going into his head because he's shaking in anticipation.

He’s cried on that day Pavel left town and flew back to Russia, thinking that their pinkie promises and swears of “we go together or not at all” would be forgotten in the haze of youth, as something of a childhood memory to laugh at when you’re drunk and calling him “sissy” for ever thinking that the fabric of time and space would never tear them apart, but what does he know, that very fabric was bringing them together. And he’s missed his chance. What if Pavel gave up on him that night? What if Pavel doesn’t care anymore? Does he even like boys?

That’s when the door opens, and Hikaru recoils into himself.  
  
Pavel appears from behind the door, and Hikaru, not knowing how to react, throws the novel at Pavel.  
  
The book hits Pavel on his temple, and he cries in pain, and the book falls open, pages face down on the floor. Pavel looks at the book, and then looks up at Hikaru.  
  
All that he's wanted to say is blown away by a metaphorical wind in his brain, so he stutters out, "I-I figured you'd want it back..."  
  
Pavel laughs, loud and light, and runs to Hikaru, collapsing onto his body in a fit of giggles, the book kicked and abandoned on the wooden floor.

"Otsuri?"  
Pavel chuckles and nods, "Otsuri."  
  
And they spent the entire day sitting there talking about the time they were away from each other all the way into the night. They don't leave for dinner; they just sit there, on Hikaru’s bed, hands clasped together, Pavel’s head on his shoulder. He tells Pavel his secrets, his dreams, his wishes, and Pavel responds in kind with giggles and wild embarrassed blushes.

They’re no longer kids, Hikaru thinks, Pavel may be this age but he’s grown so much. He’s begun to think for himself, compared to their younger years, where one would go the other would follow. And he finds that he wants that again. He wants giggles and inside jokes and hidden glances with secret messages embedded in them and even the dumb strawberry ice cream with its sprinkle distribution rules. He wants pinkie promises and throwing orange peelings at each other and eating almond chocolates and spitting out the almonds into the air for the other boy to catch in his mouth like they used to when they were kids.

And he gets that. Years later when the two are assigned to the Enterprise and Sulu almost dies on the surface of Vulcan (and after receiving a punch in the nose from Pavel when he manages to beam him and that renegade Kirk up), they cling to each other in the dark when Pavel offers his pinkie for the first time in years, “together?”

Hikaru’s eyes widen but he smiles, lacing his own pinkie around Pavel’s.

“Or not at all.” 


End file.
